The Canadian Myth

There are certain myths that are so common, well-known, and repeated that everyone accepts them as true. Even when there is evidence to the contrary, that are hard lies to kill.

Some examples:

• The tongue map - that there are certain parts of your tongue that taste sweet and other parts that taste salty and others bitter and so on. Not true. All parts of your tongue can taste all flavors, but some parts have higher concentrations of specific types of taste buds.
• Humans only use 10% of our brains - we use all of it. All the time. Every part of your brain is incredibly active. (Maybe I shouldn't speak for you. My brain, active. Your brain? You'll have to let me know.)
• Canadians are very friendly, so much friendlier than Americans - from first hand observation, not true!

Having just returned from Canada, I can tell you that this myth is just that, a myth.

This is not to say that all Canadians are unfriendly. Many of them are delightful, helpful, and welcoming. But there is an appreciable percentage who are not.

Let's start with driving. Ontario drivers are kind of aggressive. They're not New Jersey level aggressive drivers, but they aren't Iowa laid back drivers either. They are comparable to California license plate drivers in Nevada. They will cut you off and think their horns are the best tool for communication. Once we were waiting to make a turn because there was a pedestrian in the crosswalk and the car behind us started honking at us. Dude, you want me to run over the woman with the baby stroller? (I never asked the Candidates if they say stroller or perambulator.)

We didn't find our fellows particularly patient about waiting in lines. (I didn't ask the Canadians if they wait in lines or on lines.) We had a man honk and yell at us about where we parked. So we moved and then he wanted the spot we moved to.

I'm saying that Canadians are just like Americans in this respect, at least Ontarioans are very much like Americans of the East Coast. I wonder if in Alberta and British Columbia they are more like Americans of the Mountain West.

I don't know, that will take further study. I'm just starting that Canadian friendliness is not supported by the existing evidence. So next time some TV show makes a joke about the Canadians being so nice they (fill in the blank) don't you believe it.

It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Which I can taste with my entire tongue.

Labor Doodle

You probably think I meant to write labradoodle and I desperately need to spell check. But alas, I meant what I wrote and I wrote what I meant. My title is faithful one-hundred percent.

Today is Labor Day. And today when I saw the Google Doodle, it commemorates Labor Day. I first saw it today when I was on the Virtual Desktop for my work. This desktop thinks I am in Maryland and naturally gives me an American version of the browser. I noticed that when you mouse over the doodle, the little box that pops up says “Labor Day.” That got me curious.

So after I finished on the Virtual Desktop, I checked the Google Doodle on my local desktop. Same doodle. Same message when you mouse over it. Why would that be strange? Well, I am in Canada.

Yeah, Erich, but it is Labor Day in Canada too. (That was your line. Now my response.) Yes and no. It is, but they would spell it Labour Day. So I thought that when I mouse over it, it would say Labour Day. But it doesn’t. It says Labor Day. And I am definitely on the Canadian site for Google because it says Canada at the bottom.

See, it says Canada and Labor Day

 

What’s more, if I click the link, it takes me to a search page for “Labor Day” and not for “Labour Day”.

Search Results from clicking on the doodle

 

Maybe it is because my computer is set to American English? But I doubt it. I suspect that was in the coding for the doodle.

Incidentally, most countries do not celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September. The majority of countries celebrate it on May 1, International Workers Day. Why don’t we celebrate it then? I guess it’s like not using the metric system. One of those things that separates Americans from their former British overlords. Like spelling Labor without the u.

Fire and Water

This post is not, as the title might imply, about what the ancients believed were the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Nor is it any sort of incantation meant to bring about rejuvenation. Nor is it a metaphor for alcohol. Instead the title, Fire and Water, is much more literal.

This is a post about fear.

If you are thinking, that’s not literal, wait. You haven’t read it all yet.

When I was younger, I had a fear of fire. Let’s call it a healthy fear of fire, because fire can be bad for your health. I don’t know how young it began. There isn’t an inciting incident I can point to and say, yeah, that’s what did it. Or maybe there was, but it is buried deep in my subconscious. And I don’t have a submarine, so I can’t go there. (And given the weirdness of my dreams, I don’t think anyone would want to go there.)

It wasn’t a crippling fear. I could sit around a campfire with my fellow scouts or campers. But I didn’t love getting too close. I was perfectly okay with my marshmallows only slightly roasted. I never wanted to get them really into the fire so they could get warm and gooey and brown. A fire in the fireplace, that was great. Because there was a grate. Or a screen. Or some device that kept the fire inside and away from me.

But I was unable to have personal interactions with fire. The very idea freaked me out.

This is logical when you think about it: fire is dangerous. It destroys homes. It causes burns on people. It spreads across huge swaths of forested land every year. I’m not saying my fear was rational, but it had some justification.

I did get over that fear, because I had to. When I lived in New Jersey, I got a job at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. I was a demon! Okay, I was a demonstrator, meaning I did science shows for the guests of the museum and at schools throughout the tri-state area. Demonstrator is a cool title, but demon, that’s dope. (Hoping I am using dope correctly. Also hoping if my children read this they roll their eyes at my attempt to use dope.)

This job required, as you might have guessed, personal interaction with fire. I had to use a propane torch to heat a pop can with a bit of water in it so I could turn the can upside down in a dish of water and watch air pressure crush the can. I had to submerge lit candles into aquariums filled with carbon dioxide so you could see them extinguished by the lack of oxygen. Most dangerous of all, I had to demonstrate the difference between a physical change—in which I ripped a piece of paper in two—and a chemical change—in which I took one of those remaining pieces and set it on fire with a match, then put it out with my bare hands. Why would anyone do that? Well, it demonstrates science. And it earns you some street cred.

Discovering that I could use fire, work with fire, befriend fire (that may be going too far, but at least we weren’t enemies) helped me overcome my fear. Or forced me to overcome it. It wasn’t like a helping hand offered in generous benevolence. It was do or do not. There is no try. There was no try? There will be no try? Whatever the correct verb tense should be, assume I used that.

Today, I experienced that sort of fear again. Though it wasn’t about fire. It was about water. Or at least it was related to water. I’m not afraid of water itself. I’m not avoiding toilets and showers and sinks. I can still have a drink when I’m thirsty. (I mean a drink of water. Of course, I could also drink juice. I don’t have a fear of juice either.)

One of the items that Alrica and I still own, living in the trunk of the car (or the boot since I am in Canada) is an inflatable two-man kayak. Today we inflated said kayak and we kayaked in said kayak. We were on Collins Bay. It’s a small bay shaped sort of like a dragon’s claw. It is on the northeast end of Lake Ontario.

Not saying it is an exact match, but there is a similarity!

 

We entered at a boat launch, I was in front, Alrica in back. And it was great. For about thirty seconds. And then it was not great. My legs were uncomfortable. Every time I moved to paddle, the boat wobbled too much. The bay was choppy and the wake of motorboats was unfun.

About a minute later, I was getting more concerned, and a couple minutes after that, I was freaking out.

That’s weird. Let’s think about why. (Note: when you are a compulsive overthinker, you can’t just accept you were afraid. You have to analyze it, nay, overanalyze it, even though the analysis will likely come to nothing, you know it will likely come to nothing, and yet, you cannot stop yourself from doing it. Those of you who are not overthinkers can probably understand this intellectually, but not on a visceral level. Those of you who are overthinkers are probably, this very minute, overthinking whether or not you are overthinkers. Sorry if I brought that about.)

Before I analyze why I was afraid, let’s first consider, why would it be weird that I was afraid?

• This isn’t my first time in this kayak or in kayaks in general. In fall of 2022, we took the kayak to Lake Tahoe and had a delightful time. And that was just the most recent of several such trips.
• There was no threat of drowning. I had on a life jacket and I know how to swim.
• I’m not a notably jumpy person. This is not to say I am fearless, but only that I am also not generally afraid.

Let’s get to the real analysis (which in my line of work usually means a course in which you relearn calculus but you rigorously prove all the theorems. But that’s not what I mean this time.) Why was I afraid this time?

• Alrica thinks maybe I am developing a fear of being in a small craft on such a large lake. I’m not sure I agree. Lake Ontario is huge, but Collins Bay is narrow. I could see the shore we left and the shore across from us the entire time. I could even see the tip of the dragon’s claw.
• There were more motorboats with more wake than I had been used to recently. That’s true. But why did that freak me out and whitewater rafting doesn’t?
• After we pulled out, Alrica realized we forgot to attach the keel. For any non-boaters, the keel is a fin shaped piece of plastic on the bottom of the boat. It sticks down into the water and keeps the boat from pitching from side to side as much. That’s because the water pushing on either side of the keel keeps it from moving side to side easily. That could have made a difference. Maybe we were rocking more than I was used to.
• I have a cord which I can attach to the back of my glasses so that they won’t fall off easily, but I forgot to bring it to Collins Bay with us. (I know I packed it, but honestly, I don’t remember where it is in our trunk full of goods. It must be somewhere. But I didn’t remember it until I was out on the water.) Maybe I was afraid of losing my glasses. That might seem a bit unlikely, but I definitely remember that I was thinking about the fact that I didn’t have the cord for my glasses when I started to feel panicked. So if not the whole cause, it could have been a contributing factor.
• There is no reason. Fear can be irrational, and sometimes it just pops up and there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t like this reason. I like to believe that we are our brains, that we make our own decisions, that we have some semblance of control. You may think that is an illusion, but I am happier believing in the illusion. Don’t tell me how the magic is done!

So, once you have overthought the entire thing, what are you going to do then? For me, it would appear one of those things is to write a blog post about it. Does writing said post make me feel better? Eh. I wouldn’t say yes and I wouldn’t say no.

The other thing to do is get back on that horse. That isn’t literal like the title was. There were no horses involved in today’s kayak incident. We weren’t playing water polo. And yes, I know they don’t use horses in water polo. The horses would drown. They use hippocampi or hippocampuses. What’s the plural of hippocampus? (Here I refer to the hippocampus of mythology, not the part of our brain that helps us learn and remember and process the experience of fear. That hippocampus might have been involved today.)

So at some point I should go kayaking again. I can think scientifically. I can change one of the factors or all of the factors that might have caused my feelings of fear and see if that changes the situation. Of course, knowing that I should go kayaking soon and in action kayaking soon are not the same thing.

For right now, I am just happy to back on the firm earth. Ooh, that’s a third of ancient elements. Air, air, air? I’m breathing air! Now I can say this post was, in retrospect, about the elements and had nothing to do with fear.

I feel so much braver. Maybe denial is the fifth element.

Canals

A Dan, a clan, a canal, Canada! (That is a palindrome in the style of an already well-known palindrome. But this story doesn’t really involve anyone named Dan, nor any clans. But it does include canals and Canada. So well worth the reversibility.)

Thinking about some of the places we have visited—Chicago, Illinois; Midland, Michigan; Kingston, Ontario—as well as many other cities we didn’t get to, I realized that many of them wouldn’t exist or would be much smaller if it weren’t for canals.

Water is essential for a big city. Certainly we need it to drink and wash. But just as important in the development of trade, we need water for shipping. Big cities are generally cities where lots of trade can occur. There are inland big cities, like Atlanta, which was a major trading location due to the railroads that crossed there, and later the interstates. But most big cities are on major waterways or on the coast.

The Great Lakes are massive. But for realistic shipping, you need to be able to go from one lake to another. And more importantly, you need to be able to connect to the ocean. That’s not the case with the Great Lakes as nature left them.

You might be saying, “What about the St. Lawrence River?” Great question. The St. Lawrence River does run from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. The trouble is that the river isn’t navigable the whole way.

Prior to canals, if you entered the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, you could go upstream a long way. But then you hit a set of rapids. Where? Right at Montreal. That’s why Montreal is where it is. It was the furthest into the interior you could get by river. But this meant you had to transport goods over land from Montreal further west or from the west to Montreal. That’s heavy work.

The rapids were originally called Sault Saint-Louis (sault is the French word for rapids.) They were named for a teenage sailor, Louis, who drowned in these rapids during an early expedition up the river. But they were later renamed the Lachine Rapids. That’s a funny name. They were named for a city called Lachine, just southwest of Montreal and very close to the rapids. But Lachine is the French term for China. It’s kind of a joke name, because the original nobleman who was granted the land, René Robert Cavelier de La Salle, thought he could use the St. Lawrence River to find the Northwest Passage, a way across North America to the Pacific and eventually to China. That didn’t work out, but ironically they named this piece of his land Lachine, so he could say he had reached China.

Narrow boats with little draft can actually go down the rapids. In fact, there are whitewater excursions that run them. But it wasn’t possible to go upriver over the Lachine Rapids. So ships from the Atlantic couldn’t reach Lake Ontario. Montreal was as good as it got.

Then someone had an idea! Let’s build a canal that goes around these rapids. And they did. The earliest canal was called the Lachine Canal. These days that has been replaced by the bigger South Shore Canal which is part of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The St. Lawrence Seaway project was a joint venture between Canada and the United States to make it possible for ships to go from the Atlantic all the way through any of the Great Lakes to reach as far as Duluth, Minnesota or Chicago, Illinois.

But passing the Lachine Rapids was only one necessary step. It isn’t generally possible to get from one Great Lake to another. There are two exceptions. The first is Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. They are connected by a channel called the Straits of Mackinac which is deep and navigable. In fact, the water levels of Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and the Straits of Mackinac are all the same elevation. Hydrologically this means it is really all one big lake. But historically we think of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron as being separate lakes.

The other exception is between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. You get from one to the other through rivers and another lake. Lake Huron drains into the St. Clair River which runs to Lake St. Clair. Ironically, this lake is in the middle of the great ones, but it’s not big enough to be great itself. Maybe it is great adjacent. From Lake St. Clair, you go downstream through the Detroit River and reach Lake Erie. These rivers are navigable upstream as well.

Lake Superior is the highest of the lakes in elevation. It connects to Lake Huron through a river, St. Mary’s River. But that river also has a set of rapids: Saint Mary’s Rapids. Or, in French, Sault Ste. Marie. On each side of the rapids is a city called Sault Ste. Marie, one in Ontario, Canada, and the other in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, United States. How does one get past these rapids? With a canal, of course!

But the biggest, scariest barrier to navigation is between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. These are also connected by a river, but the barrier here is no set of rapids. That river is the Niagara River and that barrier is Niagara Falls. No ship is going upstream or downstream across that massive obstacle.

Ships passing between these two lakes avoid the Niagara River entirely. They use the Welland Canal, a north-south cut through the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario. It is an impressive feat of engineering, such a long canal.

But the Welland Canal isn’t the longest canal connecting the Great Lakes to the ocean. That honor goes to the Erie Canal, 351 miles long, which cuts across upstate New York to connect the Seneca River which empties in Lake Erie to the Hudson River which empties in the Atlantic Ocean. The Erie Canal is the longest canal in North America. But it is only the fourth longest canal in the world.

The longest canal in the world is also the longest duration for any canal to have ever been built. It’s called the Grand Canal and it is in China. It connects the Yangtze River and the Yellow River and it runs 1,104 miles. But what’s crazy about this canal is that work began on it in the 5th Century BCE and it was completed in the 17th Century CE. It took over 2000 years to build this monster and it was completed before any of the canals of the Great Lakes was even begun.

Well, I had plenty to say about canals and certainly Canada was mentioned. If anyone has any ideas as to how to work a Dan or a clan into the story, let me know. I hate to waste a good palindrome.

Canadian Eats

Part of the fun of going to new places is trying the local foods. As foreign nations go, Canada’s foods are perhaps the least foreign. In many ways, Canada offers similar choices to the U.S. You can find a great variety of good ethnic foods and barbecue and burgers and all the things you might find at home.

Canada has plenty of fast food options. One difference is that their most frequently encountered fast food chain is Tim Horton’s. Where we are staying, there are two Tim Horton’s so close to us (and by the Triangle Inequality, so close to each other) that I could easily walk to each in ten minutes. Tim Horton’s serves coffee and donuts, but also has grilled sandwiches (like grilled cheese or grilled cheese with some sort of lunch meat included.)

But we have tried two uniquely Canadian foods. The first, and perhaps most well known is poutine. Poutine is a dish originally out of Quebec, but has spread through the rest of the country. It’s french fries with brown gravy on top and then cheese curds atop that. That is the classic poutine québécoise. There are many variations on it. Some use a marinara sauce instead of gravy, or mozzarella instead of cheese curd. Others use different gravies. (I’m not sure I have ever needed to use the plural of gravy before.) Or different cheeses. Some even use some other form of potato.

Poutine (and forks which are not part of the poutine)

 

This really gets us to the philosophical question of the Poutine of Theseus. If Theseus replaces the cheese curd with another cheese, say parmesan, then replaces the gravy with a different sauce, say marinara, and then replaces the french fries with a different potato or a different starch, say pasta, is it really still poutine? Isn’t it now spaghetti? Are spaghetti and poutine just different varieties of one another? And is all of this irrelevant since Theseus wasn’t Canadian?

We tried poutine and found it delicious. I can only imagine how much cholesterol it has. (I could do better than only imagine, I could look it up. But I am happier not knowing the exact amount.) The cheese curd was pleasantly squeaky. The gravy was pleasantly savory. And the fries were pleasantly… um, fry-y is not a word. Let’s just say they were good french fries. As with so many things, when you combine three good ingredients, you get something that transcends the flavor of all three.

Another Canadian victual is beavertails. Before you panic, no beavers were harmed in the making of this blog post. Beavertails are named for their shape, not for having any beaver ingredients.

Picture of a picture of a beavertail

 

A beavertail is deep fried dough that is similar in shape to, you guessed it, the tail of a beaver. The fried dough is similar in crunch and flavor to a funnel cake, but it is flatter and ovaler (again not a word, but neither is ellipser. So I am at a loss as to how to explain that the shape is more ovular or elliptical. I’ll have to think about how that could be expressed.)

You might think that this fried dough would, by itself, be delightful. It probably would, but I wouldn’t know. Because a beavertail is then covered in toppings. You can have savory beavertails or dessert beavertails. The original beavertail was topped with cinnamon and sugar. Very classic. But now you can have all kinds of frostings, candies, jams, and more.

We tried an Avalanche. This had a cheesecake frosting and Skor toffee bits on it. As you can imagine, it was tasty! (Let’s not talk about the cholesterol in this delicacy either. Or maybe we should. How do the Canadians survive if all their foods are deep fried and chock full of unsaturated fats?)

Avalanche! (partially eaten)

 

Here’s something that isn’t exactly a Canadian food but a Canadian flavor. Check out this Ben & Jerry’s. Ah! More empty calories!

My home and native dairy dessert

 

The only way to work off all those calories is to walk. And the walk signals here have a jaunty head-thrown-back, shoulder-lifted attitude, unlike our walk signals with more regular posture. I know that’s not about food, but do you think I could get away with a blog post about walk signals?

I'm walkin' here!

 

Walk this way! Talk this way, ay?

Maybe I could get away with it, because no one could stop me until they had mastered the head-thrown-back, shoulder-lifted walking style of Canada. Of course, I haven’t mastered that yet. Something to work on.

Touristish

In probability theory, there is a term: mutually exclusive. When you have two events that cannot possibly both happen, we say the two events are mutually exclusive. For example, if I flip a coin and one event is that the coin lands heads and the other is that the coin lands tails, these events are mutually exclusive. They cannot both happen on one flip of a coin.

For an example of two events which are not mutually exclusive, consider this scenario. You are the stage manager of a play. Event A is that all the actors listen perfectly and there is never any conflict or tension. Event B is that you enjoy being stage manager of the production. These can (and often have) both occur. In fact, I find the probability of event A is very high, and the probability of event B is even higher.

In our current travels as digital nomads, it is not our intention to be tourists. We want so much more than just seeing the sights. We want to experience the people: how they live, what’s similar or different. We want to experience the lifestyle: how are homes set up, how are neighborhoods set up. Of course, only being in a place for a few weeks means you cannot fully know what life is like there. But we can know more than just the major sites and (if it is a true tourist trap) the fudge confectioners.

This being said, being more than just tourists and doing some of the traditional tourist activities are not mutually exclusive. (Aren’t you glad I defined my terms at the beginning.) I remember when we lived in the New York City area and some of the lifelong residents had never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. In a way, I get it. This is your city, you don’t think anything of those sites. But on the other hand, you are missing some pretty cool things and you don’t even have to go far to get to them.

We don’t want to miss the cool things just because we want to experience other things in addition. That’s why we have been touristish, not exactly tourists, but not shying away from it either.

On the way to Syracuse, New York, we passed through Niagara Falls. Syarra had never seen it, and it has been many years since Alrica and I enjoyed that wonder of nature. So we stopped. We saw the falls. And we took the Journey to the Falls. It’s a boat that takes you right up to Horseshoe Falls so you get sprayed by the mist of the thundering water. You also go past American Falls and get amazing views of it.

American Falls from the Pier

You may have heard of the Maid of the Mist. That’s the name of the corresponding boat that leaves from the U.S. side of the falls. We took the one that leaves from the Canadian side, Journey to the Falls.

Humans are a strange species. Who else would say, “Wow! I know that is a very dangerous natural phenomenon. Let’s find a way to get spectacularly close to it.” And yet, I am very glad we did it. I can’t explain in words what it is to hear the constant but varying sound of the falls crashing down. I can’t describe the feeling of the mist hitting you, not quite like rain. Nor can I explain the sight where you look at the falls but you can’t see the middle of them because there is just so much spray in the area that it is a blur, a haze. (Okay, I did put all of that in words, but those words pale next to the reality.)

Now Alrica and I are in Kingston, Ontario. The city is situated on the north shore of Lake Ontario, right where the lake drains into the St. Lawrence River. About 12,000 years ago, glaciers that were over a mile wide came through this area and carved lows and highs. After the glaciers receded, water filled in the lows. The result is islands, so many islands, here at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River. The river itself is eight miles wide at some points. And there are big islands, tiny islands, in between islands. This region is aptly named the 1000 Islands region.

To be precise, there are more than one thousand islands, though the exact count is up for debate. It depends on where you draw the line between an island and a shoal. Everyone seems to agree that an island must be at least one square foot in area, and it must stay above water year round. However, there is some disagreement regarding foliage. Some say that to be an island, the landmass must be capable of supporting one tree. (By this definition there are 1864 islands.) But others require the heftier qualification of being able to support two trees. (By that definition there are 1836 islands.) Regardless, both are greater than 1000. I guess calling it the Somewhere Between Eighteen-hundred Thirty-six and Eighteen-hundred Sixty-four Islands region would be unruly. Or less poetic.

We did not want to come this close to such a spectacle and then not see it. So once again, Alrica and I boarded a boat. And we took a three hour tour of the 1000 Islands. (It ended better than the three hour tour mentioned in the Gilligan’s Island theme song.) We learned about the bridge to nowhere. It is a series of five spans that crosses from New York to Ontario. When it was being built, it didn’t connect any major cities and that’s what locals called it. Now it connects Interstate 81 and Canadian Highway 401 and is a major border crossing.

Tiny Island

We saw the spectacular Boldt Castle, built by hotelier George Boldt for his wife Louise. But Louise died shortly before he was going to present it to her and he never returned to the castle or to Heart Island again.

Boldt Castle

We learned about shipwrecks in the St. Lawrence, and there are many. We couldn’t see the ships under the water, but they showed us sonar images and maps of where they went down.

Most of all, we saw the majesty of nature, which, as it so often does, carves and forms beautiful landscapes.

It’s okay to be a tourist. In fact, the probability is high that we’d be disappointed if we didn’t do some of the tours and see some of the sights. And ideally, travels and disappointment should be mutually exclusive.

The Measure of a Country

So how does Canada measure up?

On our way to Syracuse we passed through Ontario, Canada, the part at the north shore of Lake Erie. After dropping Syarra off at Syracuse, we then headed back into Ontario, but a different part. We are in Kingston, Ontario, at the point where Lake Ontario drains into the St. Lawrence River. This region is the 1000 Islands region and I will have more to say about that soon. But I have several blog posts in my head and they will come as they come.

Today, I want to talk about Canada, and some of the differences and similarities for Americans traveling there. There are a lot more similarities than differences, so, while it is a foreign country to Americans, it won’t feel all that foreign.

Driving is much the same. Canada has big controlled access highways that are practically the same as our interstates. Just like in our highways, most drivers treat the speed limit as though it were a suggestion (one that is cute, but hardly relevant) rather than a true limit. Of course the big difference is that these speed limits are measured in kilometers per hour. Now I am going to approach a tangent (not quite a limit.)

When we lived in Reno, we had two cars. My car was named Ozark. Going into a tangent within a tangent! The reason my car was named Ozark was because of its first big trip. We had just returned to the United States. We were with my parents in Boynton Beach, Florida. That is where we bought the car. That car went on an immediate road trip. First it went from Boynton Beach to Lancaster, Pennsylvania so we could see friends from the city we left when we started our international travels. From there the car took us to West Des Moines, Iowa, where we visited some of my family. Then we drove southwest to Harper, Texas, where Alrica’s parents live. Finally, the car took the long journey to Reno, Nevada.

We found the longitude and latitude of each of the cities on that first trip and took the average (the arithmetic mean for you mathematically minded people) of each. We then used the mean longitude and mean latitude to find a point on the map. That point was in the Ozark National Forest. Thus, the name of the car.

You may be curious what the name of the second car was (or is, since it is the car we still have.) Answer: It doesn’t have a name. Now you may be curious why doesn’t the second car have a name. I know this is going to sound a bit out there, but my wife does not believe you can just name a car. This isn’t to say that no car can have a name. But she feels a car must earn its name. Though the process for doing so is a bit opaque to me. I mean, if our car won the Indianapolis 500, would that be enough? (Heck, if it even competed in the Indianapolis 500, that would be quite a feat. Especially as it isn’t an Indy Car. I guess Nascar racing is more realistic.) What, short of some epic racing, jumping over a river, or being thematically related to a superhero makes a car worthy of having a name? Thus far, I don’t know. And that’s why I call our current vehicle The Car Which Shall Not be Named. (And no, that is not a name, it is just what I call it. Don’t argue with me, you’ll get me in trouble with Alrica!)

Back to only one level of tangency (though I am super tempted to consider, geometrically, what the tangent to a tangent would be, but I will save that for my imagination). We took a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia while we lived in Reno. And we took Ozark on that trip. Alrica was driving when we crossed the border. At the first speed limit sign we came to, she noted that it was in kph (kilometers per hour) and the car’s speedometer was in mph (miles per hour). The speedometer was digital only, Bemoaning that she would need to do conversions, I pointed out that there was no such need. One lovely thing about Ozark was that, on the dashboard, there was a button which would convert your speedometer from miles per hour to kilometers per hour. (Luckily, that same button would also convert back if you pressed it again, or the car would have been very frustrating for the rest of our days in America after that trip to BC.) One button convenience.

Now, we are using The Car Which Shall Not be Named. It has no such convenient button. But it does have an analog speedometer, where the needle moves along a circular arc with speeds on it. The outer edge of the arc has the numbers in miles per hour. But there is an inner arc with smaller numbers (here by smaller I mean in a smaller font size, because the numbers are actually greater numbers) which lists kilometers per hour. Zero button convenience. The Car Which Shall Not Be Named also has a digital speedometer. Thus far, I can’t figure out how to make that change units.

Incidentally, this difference in units applies to all the distances too. If a sign reads Toronto 240, you are not 240 miles away. You are about 150 miles away, because you are 240 kilometers away. And on that note, unlike in America where there is a mile marker every mile, in Canada there do not seem to be regular kilometer markers on the edge of the road.

The place where the change of units is most confusing is when you want to buy gasoline. In America we state our prices in US dollars per gallon. But in Canada they state their price in Canadian cents per liter. How can you know how much you are paying? Math to the rescue!

First, I convert from Canadian cents to Canadian dollars. This is just like it would be in America, you divide by 100, or you move the decimal point two places to the left. Then you multiply the price by 3.79. Why? There are 3.79 liters in one gallon, so to buy a gallon of gasoline, you have to buy 3.79 liters of gasoline. Finally, you multiply by the exchange rate, how much US money is one Canadian dollar? Right at the moment, that is about 74 cents or 0.74 dollars.

I could write fractions to explain it using dimensional analysis. Would anyone be excited about that? I mean, other than me? Anyway, effectively if you turn the price into Canadian dollars and multiply by 2.8 then you have approximately the price in US dollars per gallon. (If the exchange rate changes, that number would change too.)

For example, right now in Kingston, you see gasoline for 164.9 meaning 164.9 Canadian cents per liter. (Note: Canadians would correct me and say it is 164.9 Canadian cents per litre. I acknowledge that it was the Americans who changed the spelling of words and the Canadians are keeping it pure. But both my second grade teacher, Ms. Pelz, and my spell checker would be disappointed if I were to go around writing litre. You can’t probably see it in the blog post, but as I am writing this, there is a wiggly red line under litre.) So I would say 164.9 cents is 1.649 Canadian dollars per litre. And then multiplying by 2.8 says I am paying about 4.62 US dollars per gallon.

If you are feeling hot under the collar after that entire excursion into mathematics but you still want to travel abroad, no fears. There are apps that will convert your gasoline (or really petrol) prices from local currency per liter into dollars per gallon. So you can cool down now. And you would do so in Celsius.

Yes, that is the other everyday unit of importance. (It’s not the only other one, but it is one that comes up pretty often.) But think of it this way: 20 degrees - shorts, 10 degrees - pants, and somewhere in the middle, you decide when to change.

The grocery store is very familiar. I mean, I don’t know which aisle holds anything unless it happens to be common enough to be on the big signs. But that’s true anytime I go to a new grocery store. They have similar products, they have store brands, they have shopping carts and check out clerks and self-check out lanes. But I have noted a few differences.

The butcher area has a Halal section. I think this is very cool. We saw that a lot in Muslim majority countries when we traveled. It is nice to see such helpful service in a country that has many Muslims, but which are certainly a minority.

Weights are in grams, so if you want to compare meat prices to those at home, remember 454 grams is a pound. (You can approximate with 450 grams.) I was surprised by how many packages of ground meat are 450 grams or even 454 grams. This is probably a remnant from the days when Canada still used the Imperial system. Not saying the meat is that old, just the size of the containers.

The grocery store doesn’t give you any bags at all. At least not in Ontario. You can buy reusable bags, but you really need to remember to bring your own. They don’t have paper and they don’t have plastic.

I guess it is a question of flexibility. If you are going to travel internationally, there are so many cultural differences you have to appreciate. Honestly, the units of measure aren’t that big a deal. There are plenty of conversion apps and after a while, you get a sense of how much you are spending relative to the prices you are used to.

The other possibility would be for the United States to switch to the metric system, making all of us get used to it, and then foreign travel would have one of the obstacles taken out of the way. But that doesn’t seem likely. While I wouldn’t say we are diametrically opposed to such a move, we are certainly metrically opposed.